Firenotes

About Fire Notes

Fire Notes are research summaries which outline important research findings in easy to understand language. They are a great way to access the research and to gain an understanding of how you can benefit from the science, as well as apply the findings. Each Fire Note can be viewed below, and are sortable by year published and topic.

Getting the most out of Fire Notes

To help you get the most out of each Fire Note, simple activity sheets are available. These activity sheets will enable you to consider the key issues raised in a Fire Note, the impact this has on your business and how you can use the research. Activities range from five minute tasks suitable for one person, through to team/group activities that can last an hour. Download them below.

Share and subscribe

Find Fire Notes useful? Are you going to apply the research findings, or do you know others who can benefit from the research? Make sure you share Fire Notes on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe for free and get new Fire Notes delivered straight to your inbox. Email us.

Fire Note 137: In the 2003 Canberra bushfires, a number of unusual fires were observed in which bushfire spread sideways in a diagonal or crosswise direction to background winds. It occurred alongside rapid and intense downwind fire spread...

Fire Note 136: This Fire Note reports in more detail on the smoke dispersion modelling work undertaken as part of the Fire Impact and Risk Evaluation Decision Support Tool (Fire DST) project,providing a better ...

Fire Note 134: This Fire Note outlines research undertaken within the bushfire-prone communities of Roleystone and Kelmscott in the Perth Hills, about 45 minutes east of Perth, Western Australia. The researchers surveyed householders to...

Fire Note 132: Offers a new way of thinking about bushfire preparedness and its measurement. The study defines preparedness in terms of three householder goals: stay and defend, evacuate safely or improve the property’s fire resistance when left unattended...

Fire Note 131: In October 2013, bushfires swept across parts of New South Wales, leaving a trail of destruction and loss. The NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) commissioned the Bushfire CRC to conduct community-focused research with a number of communities hit...

Fire Note 130: Features the findings of four research projects on the impact of fire on water quantity and quality, as well as changing carbon stores (above and below the ground). Among its key findings, the research shows that controlled burning in fire-...

Fire Note 129: How do you motivate people living with fire risk on their doorstep to safeguard their properties and increase their chance of survival? This research explores how householders perceive the value and risks of living in or near bushland and...

Fire Note 127: Understanding how a bushfire progresses from ignition to conflagration is essential to planning effective suppression strategies and issuing public warnings – thereby saving lives. The period between when a fire starts, and when it reaches its...

Fire Note 126: An alternative approach to evaluating building vulnerability has been developed using a dynamic bushfire simulator. The approach creates sets of fire predictions, which can then be used to create maps of potential fire behaviour. Simulation...

Fire Note 125: Addressing the impacts of climate and global change on fire regimes is one of the most important strategic issues confronting bushfire managers in Australia. This Fire Note discusses the findings of research that has investigated...

Fire Note 124: Fire managers have to face a multitude of competing priorities when considering how to reduce losses from future fires. With limited funds, an increasing population to protect from bushfire, and more people living in bushfire-prone areas, fire...

Fire Note 123: This research developed models that predict the number and probability of human- caused bushfires per day in south west Western Australia from bushfire incident records and weather data.

Fire Note 122: This completed PhD research examined the role that warning fatigue plays in the risk perceptions, warning response and decision-making processes of people living in bushfire-prone areas. The study showed that warning fatigue reduced attention...

Fire Note 121: This pilot research project applied the process of ‘place mapping’, a new approach for fire and land management agencies, to gain a better understanding of how communities in rural/urban areas perceive native vegetation in the context of their...

Fire Note 120: This research is investigating whether shorter, more frequent shifts are a better alternative to regular day and night shift rosters that are currently used by fire and land management agencies in Australia. Data is currently being analysed,...

Fire Note 119: January 2013 saw NSW areas around Yass, Shoalhaven and Coonabarabran impacted by large fires. At the request of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, the Bushfire CRC coordinated a field research task force to interview a sample of...

Fire Note 118: Better management of emergency incidents can reduce any adverse consequences on communities. This Fire Note discusses research into multi-agency emergency management at regional and state levels to improve incident management. The...

Fire Note 117: The research findings presented in this Fire Note explain that different psychological processes between individuals drives their decision making. Residents who wait and see when threatened by a bushfire do so because they fear making...

Fire Note 116: Large areas of southern Australia, especially along the east and west coasts extending inland, face above normal fire potential for the 2013-2014 fire season, despite the extensive fires in some parts of the country over the last 12 months....

Fire Note 115: This Fire Note outlines a study on the amount of water needed as forests recover after fire. Research shows that after three years mixed species eucalyptus forests that regenerate by sprouting do not use more water than similar unburnt...

Fire Note 114: This Fire Note outlines the emission products released in smoke from rural/urban interface fires and what this means. The materials burnt during the research are commonly present in a house or surrounds, but the current knowledge on...

Fire Note 113: Large areas of northern Australia face the prospect of an above normal bushfire season this year, due to generally below average rainfall in the months leading up to the main fire season.

Fire Note 112: This Fire Note outlines research investigating why many residents of bushfire prone areas delay their decision to defend or evacuate in response to a bushfire until the day of a fire. The research examined several plausible reasons for...

Fire Note 111: Exposure to smoke and high temperatures, coupled with little sleep, can impair firefighters’ cognitive (mental) and physical capacities on the fireground. This Fire Note presents research currently being undertaken to discover more...

Fire Note 110: This Fire Note focuses on the influence of the physical condition of different plant species from forests and grasslands in eastern and northern Australia. In two studies, the influence of fuel moisture on the combustion...

Fire Note 109: This Fire Note reports on the Fire Impact and Risk Evaluation Decision Support Tool (FireDST), a proof of concept simulation system that aims to provide critical fire planning information to emergency services, government and the...

Fire Note 108: Fire agencies are seeking to understand if and how individuals and households prepare for a bushfire. They need to know if individuals and households prepare in different respects to an equal extent, and the factors that influence bushfire...

Fire Note 107: Despite the significant resources devoted to bushfire public education, people living in communities at risk of bushfire continue to demonstrate reluctance to adopting bushfire preparedness measures when these measures are communicated through...

Fire Note 106: This completed PhD research investigated the teamwork and decision making differences between familiar (pre-formed) and unfamiliar (ad hoc) incident management teams (IMTs). This Fire Note examines the ways in which the...

Fire Note 105: There is growing interest for economic information to help inform resource allocation decisions during bushfires. This Fire Note highlights how economic principals can assist, by appraising the breadth of economic information and...

Fire Note 104: This Fire Note presents examples of social networks, aiming to understand the quality and characteristics of a social network that can aid bushfire preparedness. In this context, social networks refers to relationships that connect...

Fire Note 103: Urban and regional planning has an increasingly significant contribution to make in managing bushfire risk. This Fire Note reports on initial outcomes of research to identify leading practice in spatial planning for bushfire risk and...

Fire Note 102: This Fire Note explains the importance of a knowledge management system for the development of bushfire communication products. It shows the potential benefits of such a system for fire agencies, and outlines how the creation of a...

Fire Note 101: This Fire Note highlights the importance of gender matters in the Australian bushfire context and considers how the international literature on gender and disaster relates in the areas of risk perception and exposure, preparedness...

Fire Note 100: This Fire Note is a special edition that looks back on the broad range of fire research projects that have been summarised in Fire Notes since 2005. It also looks ahead to the new areas of fire research that need to be...

Fire Note 99: This Fire Note documents the first stage of the Firebrand potential and spot fire initiation project. This project is developing understanding of the spot fire ignition potential of firebrands under a range of fuel and weather...

Fire Note 98: Immediately following the 7 February 2009 Victorian bushfires the Bushfire CRC organised a multi-agency Task Force to investigate and report on three aspects of the fire: fire behaviour; building survivability and infrastructure; and human...

Fire Note 97:Research has shown that Australian emergency management policy suffers from a lack of clear objectives or measures of success. This absence means that agencies, governments and citizens cannot identify whether or not policy objectives...

Fire Note 96: This Fire Note examines the effect of prescribed burning on forest carbon and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Results from this project will supply critical information to predict the emission of greenhouse gases from...

Fire Note 95: Large areas of southern Australia, from the east coast to the west coast, face above average fire potential for the 2012-13 fire season, despite the extensive fires in some parts of the country over the last 12 months. However, the area most at...

Fire Note 93: Large areas of Northern Australia will face above-normal fire potential for the 2012-13 fire season, despite the extensive fires in some parts of the region last season. Significant areas of land were not burnt last year so the fire potential in...

Fire Note 89: Pioneering Bushfire CRC research is helping children learn about bushfires and other hazards as well as helping education, emergency service and other authorities enhance the effectiveness of bushfire education campaigns.

Fire Note 88: The increasing use of the term “community” can be seen as part of an international trend in disaster management towards formally recognising the importance of community power, resilient communities and encouraging links between communities and government...

Fire Note 87: Bushfire CRC researchers Jim McLennan and Glenn Elliott of La Trobe University have produced a handy booklet for community bushfire safety researchers that provides a checklist of questions about household bushfire preparation activities.

Fire Note 86: A thick, tall band of grass extends across much of the middle of Australia from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in southern Queensland and the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales. The grass – waist- and even shoulder-high in places – ...

Fire Note 85: Large areas of Northern Australia face above-normal fire potential for the 2011 fire season. The main cause of the above normal risk is strong vegetation growth in many areas fuelled by the wet weather that accompanied the very strong La Niña event of 2010-11...

Fire Note 83: The expanding rural-urban fringe means there is likely to be increased firefighting activity in such settings. The rural-urban interface is an environment characterised by a more complex mixture of fuels, resulting in an increased risk of toxic products in...

Fire Note 82: Fire agencies and the community need to understand the limit of the law as it applies to fire planning and emergencies and to advocate for reforms to ensure that the legal system does not impose undue burdens on communities that must live with the risk of fire...

Fire Note 81: This Fire Note focuses on two studies investigating the role of prescribing fluids before firefighters deploy to the fire ground and the prescription of fluids during their fire ground shift. The effect of these hydration strategies on firefighters'...

Fire Note 78: Eucalypt dieback is widespread throughout Australia affecting many forests that are utilised for wood resources or are protected for conservation. The causes of eucalypt dieback are currently unknown but may be related to altered fire regimes and associated...

Fire Note 77: La Trobe University Bushfire CRC PhD scholar Claire Johnson studied the extent to which firefighters prepare for the worst during incidents, highlighting the importance of being ready for a worst-case scenario and finding inconsistencies in preparation for...

Fire Note 76: The ability to accurately predict woody fuel consumption during a fire is important for both forest and fire management. Information on woody fuel consumption in Australian southern eucalypt forest is scant and the predictive capacity of existing models...

Fire Note 75: This Fire Note describes the Know Your Patch to Grow Your Patch guide, produced by Dr Alison Cottrell of James Cook University as an end product of the Bushfire CRC Understanding Communities project.

Fire Note 73: Bushfire CRC research led by Dr Christine Owen of the University of Tasmania has scrutinised Incident Management teamwork in Australia and New Zealand and found a number of areas of concern as well as areas that work well.

Issue 70: Research into the performance of a range of residential fences under simulated bushfire conditions. These tests were conducted in 2005 at the NSW Rural Fire Service Hot Fire Facility, at Mogo, on the south coast of New South Wales.

Issue 55: This research provides guidance on the types of sediment traps to use - hay bales, coir bales or silt fencing - to reduce the amount of mobilised sediment reaching water reservoirs after bushfire.

Issue 7 - The AFAC position and the Bushfire CRC's research as at 2008. This advice has been superseded by the Prepare - Act - Survive position adopted by Australian fire services following the release of the report of the Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires of...